Category Archives: Pakistan

Two Taliban Jihadis getting ready to behead a Polish hostage. Note the flag in the background. If you can’t tell the difference between this setting and those of EVERY OTHER JIHADIST organization in the world, then you aren’t qualified to work for President Obama

Obama and his Obamanistas have told so many outright lies about the Taliban over the years that we can now devote a lengthy article to it.

It started way back in 2008 when Obama was campaigning for the presidency. Back in those days he was saying that Iraq was a sideshow and that President Bush had “taken his eye off the ball.” According to Obama, the good war was in Afghanistan and he was going to concentrate on Afghanistan, where the Taliban were fighting US forces, when he got to be president.

That turned out to be campaign rhetoric. Sure, he pulled out of Iraq first, but, let’s face it: Obama never really went hard in Afghanistan and now he’s abandoning that fight, just as he abandoned the fight in Iraq.

Pretty soon into his administration, the Obamanistas started the meme that the Taliban weren’t actually our enemy. This predates the latest supposition that the Taliban aren’t terrorists by several years.

Two lies there. The Taliban are America’s enemy and they are also terrorists.

In December 2013, the Taliban published the autumn edition of their magazine, Azan.

This was the fourth issue of the magazine and was significant in that it called for Muslims in the West to launch attacks at home or fight on foreign battlefields, urging recruits to even leave behind their children or elderly parents:

Not only are these statements from the Obama administration disheartening because our troops have been fighting Taliban Jihadis for a decade, they also demonstrate a profound ignorance about Jihadist doctrine.

Jihadist doctrine does not regard nationalities or international borders as significant. Under their doctrine, Jihad is to be waged to make Allah’s law and religion supreme around the entire world. With their fall Azan magazine, the Taliban clearly demonstrate adherence to that doctrine with their call for Muslims in the West to launch attacks at home.

What’s more this is not something new from the Taliban. When they seized power in Afghanistan in 1996, they announced that Afghanistan was to be a launching pad for global Jihad and invited Jihadi fighters to come to their country. Jihadis from all over the Islamic world and even parts of the West and the Pacific Rim heeded that call and gravitated to the new Shariah-ruled outpost established by the Taliban regime.

Among those who relocated to Afghanistan was Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. We know the rest: Al Qaeda launched its attack on America from Afghanistan and the Taliban harbored Al Qaeda from the US when America sought to bring justice down on them.

How anyone can look at these facts and conclude that the Taliban are not our enemy is mind-boggling. The idea that the Taliban want to strictly limit their evil designs to Afghanistan is absurd. Yet that has been the policy of the Obama administration for years. It is a policy of lies.

And, yes, despite what the Obamanistas might claim, the Taliban are in fact terrorists.

Actually, we don’t believe that it makes sense to get too wrapped up in labeling them “terrorists.” Terrorism is a tactic, a method of warfare. The warfare that the Taliban–and the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Lashkar e Taiba, HAMAS, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and a host of other groups–are waging is called Jihad. In Islamic law, Jihad is defined as warfare to establish the religion:

• Faisal Shahzad, the Jihadist who attempted to detonate a Vehicle-Born Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) in New York’s Time Square in May 2010, was trained at a Taliban camp and, according to Attorney General Eric Holder himself, “the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack…We know they helped facilitate it. We know they probably helped finance it and that he was working at their direction.”

Faisal Shahzad. This Connecticut resident/Pakistani immigrant attempted to bomb Times Square in New York City

• Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American who pled guilty in a plot to bomb the New York City subway in 2009, traveled to Afghanistan to join the Taliban when he was recruited by Al Qaeda to go back to America to attack targets in the US homeland. This shows the continued, close cooperation and collaboration between the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Najibullah Zazi. This Denver resident travelled to Afghanistan where he received terrorist training. Upon his return, he plotted to bomb New York subways.

Most recently, there are new reports from Leftist NBC News that hundreds of Taliban fighters have joined the Islamic State, which is becoming a greater factor in the southwest Asia region.

The Obamanistas try to make a distinction between the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Taliban in Pakistan. But not even NBC is subscribing to that nonsense. No one in the world outside the Obama administration believes that the Taliban in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan have nothing to do with each other.

The Taliban are committed Jihadists. As such, they are undoubtedly an enemy of America. They have killed and wounded thousands of US GIs in combat over the past decade and they have, from the time they originally seized power in Afghanistan to today, involved themselves with other Jihadist organizations from around the world, all of which are classified as “terrorist” organizations. Jihadis do not limit their scope based on political borders; their stated goals are global. To say that the Taliban are not the enemy of the United States or are not terrorists is to demonstrate a profound ignorance of the doctrinal basis for the threat from Jihad. When that ignorance comes from the executive branch of the US government, it can only be described as frightening.

In a move that can only illustrate the two-faced nature of Pakistan’s role in fighting terrorism, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the chief operational commander of the Jihadist terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, who is believed to have masterminded the horrific 2008 Mumbai attack, is set to be released from detention in Pakistan.

The Islamic State is gaining acceptance and accumulating followers among Jihadist groups from the Philippines to Nigeria.

But there is perhaps no Islamic State alliance more worrisome than its devotees in the Taliban.

Earlier this week, the Pakistani Taliban’s spokesman and 5 other Taliban chieftains in Pakistan pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. The six will remain members of the Taliban but are also now official emissaries of the Islamic State.

This development is sure to have serious consequences for security in Pakistan and Afghanistan (all six of these men are based near the Afghan border), bringing the type of violence and brutal Shariah oppression the Islamic State has brought to Syria and Iraq.

There are now worries that other senior members of the Taliban may declare allegiance to the Islamic State, including the Taliban’s overall leader in Pakistan, Maulana Fazlullah, who has previously voiced support for the organization.

The Islamic State now controls vast areas of Iraq and Syria, has welcomed tens of thousands of Jihadis from around the globe into its ranks, and has become the wealthiest terrorist organization on record, with zakat donations from rich Salafist supporters in Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, in addition to an income of up to $3 million per day from oil sold on the Middle East’s lucrative black market.

The Islamic State is not simply an Iraqi problem or a Syrian problem. IS has metastasized into a worldwide organization with 20,000 recruits from Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, the U.S., Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Germany. Even worse, Jihadists from Boko Haram in Nigeria, Abu Sayyef in the Philippines, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Northwest Africa and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from Yemen have all pledged allegiance to IS.

There can no longer be any doubt that the global Islamic insurgency that some have been warning about for some time, amounts to a world war. Nevertheless, policymakers here in the U.S. continue to ignore or deny this reality.

Over the period of a generation, the West has allowed itself to be thoroughly infiltrated by a savage and barbaric belief system. This is evidenced by the global base of recruitment that the Islamic State has been able to take advantage of and the numerous public displays of support for IS in the West.

From the 2013 archives, specifically from October 2013, this might be the best article on Islam and Jihad during the course of the year…by the indomitable Mark Steyn:

The “war” part of the war on terror is pretty much over, and we’re now fighting it culturally, rhetorically. Which is not something we do well. Take the British prime minister and his traditional nothing-to-do-with-Islam statement, issued in the wake of the Kenyan shopping-mall carnage:

These appalling terrorist attacks that take place where the perpetrators claim they do it in the name of a religion: They don’t. They do it in the name of terror, violence and extremism and their warped view of the world. They don’t represent Islam, or Muslims in Britain or anywhere else in the world.

Same with the Muslims who beheaded a British soldier, Drummer Rigby, on a London street in broad daylight. On that occasion, David Cameron assured us that the unfortunate incident was “a betrayal of Islam. . . . There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act.”

How does he know? Mr. Cameron is not (yet) a practicing Muslim. A self-described “vaguely practicing” Anglican, he becomes rather less vague and unusually forceful and emphatic when the subject turns to Islam. At the Westgate mall in Nairobi, the terrorists separated non-Muslim hostages from Muslims and permitted the latter to leave if they could recite a Muslim prayer—a test I doubt Mr. Cameron could have passed, for all his claims to authority on what is and isn’t Islamic. So the perpetrators seem to think it’s something to do with Islam—and, indeed, something to do with Muslims in the United Kingdom, given that the terrorists included British subjects (as well as U.S. citizens).

It was a busy weekend for Nothing to Do with Islam. Among the other events that were nothing to do with Islam were the murder of over 85 Pakistani Christians at All Saints’ Church in Peshawar and the beheading of Ricardo Dionio in the Philippines by BIFF, the aggressively acronymic breakaway faction (the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters) from the more amusingly acronymic MILF (the Moro Islamic Liberation Front). Despite a body count higher than Kenya, the Pakistani slaughter received barely a mention in the Western media. You’d be hard put to find an Anglican church in England with a big enough congregation on a Sunday morning to kill 85 worshipers therein, but in Peshawar, a 99 percent Muslim city, the few remaining Christians are not of the “vaguely practicing” Cameron variety. Viewed from London, however, they’ve already lost: One day there will be no Christians in Peshawar and the city will be 100 percent Muslim. It may be “nothing to do with Islam,” but it’s just the way it is: We accept the confessional cleansing of Pakistan, as we do of Egypt, because it’s part of “the Muslim world.” Nairobi, on the other hand, is not, and a murderous assault on an upscale shopping mall patronized by Kenya’s elite and wealthy secular expats gets far closer to the comfort zone wherein David Cameron “vaguely practices”: In a “clash of civilizations” in which one side doesn’t want to play, a shattered church has less symbolic resonance than a shattered frozen-yogurt eatery.

On this side of the Atlantic, meanwhile, the Canadian branch of the Islamic Society of North America lost its charitable status after it was revealed to be funding all that jihad stuff that’s nothing to do with Islam.

The terror alerts issued by the US State Department, Interpol and the foreign offices of Great Britain, France and Germany should worry Westerners very much.

US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen

If there is indeed specific information about a credible threat that closed down US embassies in 22 nations, grounded 6 international airline flights (so far) and resulted in the most serious global travel advisory put out by the US State Department in several years (covering an entire month) then it is an indication that Al Qaeda is not only NOT “on the run,” but is evidently more prolific than ever in terms of its reach.

Under such circumstances, it’s not a question of “if” Western targets will be struck again, but “when.”

We have been lied to about the magnitude and scope of the Jihadist terrorist threat. That is the unmistakable conclusion.

Some cynics and skeptics seem to think that the whole issue has been contrived by the Obama administration for political purposes, but this makes no sense at all.

Obama has repeatedly declared victory over Al Qaeda. He essentially declared that the killing of Osama Bin Laden placed the terrorist organization on the ropes and all but announced an end to the war on terror, complete with a re-orientation of the US military toward a significantly smaller force primarily focused on the Asia-Pacific region.

Moreover, his policy of drone strikes was supposed to have decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership structure.

Apparently none of what Obama told us was correct.

So for Obama now to use that same terrorist threat to improve his political fortunes makes no sense at all.

Think about it: So when Obama repeatedly says Al Qaeda is on the run and for all practical purposes defeated—-it’s regarded as propaganda for the masses. And then when the State Dept issues a global travel advisory and closes 22 embassies because of a threat from Al Qaeda, that’s also propaganda for those same masses?

It doesn’t add up. I think Obama lied about Al Qaeda in the first place. It was in his best interests to remove a major national security threat from the public sphere and, with the aid of a compliant media, he successfully did so. But it was never anything more than words on paper and talk in pretty speeches.

Al Qaeda isn’t on the run. They aren’t defeated. And this terror alert, unfortunately, isn’t phony.

The alert coincides with the end of Ramadan, a holy month in Islam in which America has often restrained itself in fighting Islamic enemies, but during which Jihadists have actually escalated their attacks. The closure of the embassies comes on the Ramadan “Night of Power.” Without getting into obnoxious detail about Islamic doctrine, all you really need to know about the “Night of Power” is that it was the day on which the USS Cole was attacked in Aden harbor in Yemen in 2000. And this is the same week during which the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in east Africa were bombed back in 1998.

So, when intelligence emerges suggesting that US targets will come under attack at this time, it is something to take seriously, especially given the fact that Al Qaeda leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri released a statement in the past week instructing Al Qaeda’s followers to attack US targets now.

Perhaps the most significant evidence that this terror alert should be taken seriously comes from the fact that France, Germany and Great Britain have all shut their embassies in Yemen down as well and issued travel advisories to their citizens. Unless they’re in on some scheme to help Obama’s approval rating, my guess is there is a real threat out there.

German diplomatic post in Yemen

Al Qaeda is real, folks. They’ve been real for decades now and they’re deadly. To assume otherwise is suicidal. To make matters worse, there is evidence to indicate that they are now as capable as they have been at any time since 1998.

Consider the fact that in the past month there have been large-scale prison breakouts in nine Islamic nations, including Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Yemen. The timing and scale of these breakouts in which mostly Jihadi fighters made their escapes, is unprecedented. Interpol suspects Al Qaeda involvement and coordination and has issued an advisory to that effect. On 22 July, 500 Jihadis, including senior level Al Qaeda operatives, escaped from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Five days later, on 27 July, 1100 inmates escaped from a prison near Benghazi, Libya. And four days after that, on 31 July, the Taliban led a breakout from a prison in Pakistan in which an unknown number of Jihadis escaped.

Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq

These operations were almost certainly orchestrated and coordinated, most probably with help from the inside in each country. This was a massive undertaking that demonstrates Al Qaeda’s military as well as political power in the Islamic world. With so many Jihadis back on the loose, Westerners better brace themselves.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims do not commit acts of violent Jihad, but that does not mean that there isn’t a doctrinal basis for it in Islamic scripture.

I am not talking about just a few violent verses in the Quran. The Islamic trilogy is replete with it: the Quran, the Hadith and the Sirah. (The Hadith are traditions and stories of the life of Muhammed and the Sirah is the biography of Muhammed). Moreover, in the Quran, the principle of abrogation bestows the most violent verses with the greatest strength as compared to earlier, peaceful verses.

These are facts, and if you read what the Jihadis themselves talk to each other about, EVERYTHING they do is based on contemporary interpretation of Islamic scripture.

To assign these beliefs to EVERY SINGLE Muslim of the 1.2 billion Muslims on the planet is wrong. But to deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for all of this violent Jihad is just as wrong and it is preventing the West from coming to grips with the global war with which we are faced, whether we want to believe it or not. There is a reason why we see Islamic terrorist organizations as well as individual Jihadis waging violent Jihad in places as geographically diverse as Boston, Los Angeles, Fort Hood, Little Rock, New York, Washington, Buenos Aires, London, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Madrid, Moscow, Beslan, Marrakech, Algiers, Benghazi, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Yaounde, Nairobi, Mogadishu, Timbuktu, Kaduna, Dar el Salam, Sana’a, Istanbul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Karachi, Islamabad, Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mumbai, Amritsar, Dhaka, Hat Yai, Yala, Bali, and Mindanao.

In warfare, your enemy’s reality becomes your reality. To defeat him, you better understand him. You better understand his motivations and his goals. In short, you need to know what makes him tick. We understood what made the Nazis tick, we had Mein Kampf as a doctrinal guide. We understood what made the communists tick, we had The Communist Manifesto and other works as a doctrinal guide. But we REFUSE to even TRY to understand what makes the Jihadis tick because we fear that the reality will be too frightening. We are in willful denial: “The violence simply cannot have anything to do with Islam because there are too many peaceful Muslims in the world.”

That is missing the point entirely. The fact that the majority of Muslims do not know Islamic doctrine and thus do not adhere to it is not particularly remarkable or surprising. How many Catholics are truly highly familiar with the doctrinal aspects of their faith?

The fact remains that there are violent Jihadists around the world who commit acts of war and they both justify it on Islamic scripture and carry out these acts to promote Islam. The doctrinal basis is found in Islamic law, known as Shariah. The Jihadists’ goal is to impose Islamic law and Islamic law is the code which they follow. (If you are skeptical of this, go pick up a copy of the excellent work by Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, and read what the enemy writes and says.) To deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for violent Jihad is becoming more and more suicidal as a civilization with each new incident that we in turn deny.

The latest example is of course in Boston. Two Jihadis, perhaps members of a Jihadist organization, or perhaps so-called “lone wolf” actors, committed atrocious acts of violent Jihad, killing several innocents and wounding many more. Despite evidence on social media and YouTube, as well as accounts of the Jihadis’ devout Islamic beliefs, the simpletons in the news media and even in our own government are pondering aloud what their motivation could possibly have been. Hours and hours of TV coverage in the so-called “mainstream” media go by with nary a mention of the word “Islam.” The elephant in the room is being ignored.

Some “experts” are quoted as taking comfort in the belief that the two Tsarnaev brothers may not have had any operational connection with any known terrorist organization, such as Al Qaeda. This is 180 degrees out from reality and these “experts” completely miss the point.

The fact that the Tsarnaev brothers may have “only” been inspired to commit Jihad on their own is not cause for celebration or relaxation. It is cause for alarm and it would seem to be part of a disturbing pattern that has been emerging over the years:

• Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, aka Carlos Bledsoe, apparently acting on his own after receiving terrorist training in Yemen, shot two US Army soldiers outside a Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting office, killing one, Private William Long and wounding another.

• Major Nidal Malik Hasan, apparently acting on his own, after years of conversing with Al Qaeda Imam Anwar Al Awlaki, shot and killed 13 fellow US Army soldiers and wounded 39 more.

These types of attacks are indicative of a revolutionary critical mass in which centralized direction and control is no longer necessary. Jihadis around the world are now waging violent Jihad in Al Qaeda-like fashion after reading web postings and listening to sermons. This presents a whole new series of challenges for security services and makes the use of military force much less effective. Infiltrating organizations such as Al Qaeda and Hezbollah has been extremely difficult. But how does one infiltrate lone wolf actors like the Tsarnaev brothers? Who does the US military go after in the wake of the Boston attacks?

This new reality makes identifying and understanding the Islamic doctrinal basis of our Jihadist enemies all the more important, yet with each passing attack, we seem to be getting further and further away from doing so.

Their latest email bulletin included this update on hostages held by Jihadist terrorists around the globe, in places like Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria, Syria, Mali, Afghanistan, Niger, Iran and Iraq. The overwhelming majority of hostages are Western; 8 are Americans:

• French national Tanguy Moulin-Fournier held hostage in Cameroon/Nigeria for 20 days
• French national Albane Moulin-Fournier held hostage in Cameroon/Nigeria for 20 days
• French Moulin-Fournier family uncle held hostage in Cameroon/Nigeria for 20 days
• French Moulin-Fournier Child, age 5, held hostage in Cameroon/Nigeria for 20 days
• French Moulin-Fournier Child, age 8, held hostage in Cameroon/Nigeria for 20 days
• French Moulin-Fournier Child, age 10, held hostage in Cameroon/Nigeria for 20 days
• French Moulin-Fournier Child, age 12, held hostage in Cameroon/Nigeria for 20 days
• Canadian Jernoc Wobert held hostage by ELN in Colombia for 1 month, 21 days
• Austrian national held hostage in Yemen for 2 months, 18 days
• Finnish female national held hostage in Yemen for 2 months, 18 days
• Finnish male national held hostage in Yemen for 2 months, 18 days
• French national Francis Collomp held hostage by Ansaru in Nigeria for 2 months, 20 days
• American journalist James Foley held hostage in Syria for 3 months, 17 days
• French national Alberto Rodriguez Leal held hostage by MUJAO in Mali for 3 months, 19 days
• Ukrainian journalist Anhar Kochneva held hostage by Abu Husayn Squadron in Syria for 4 months, 27 days
• American journalist Austin Tice held hostage in Syria for 6 months, 26 days
• Canadian Astrid Shel held hostage in Somalia by al-Shabaab for 8 months, 11 days
• Canadian Korat Sadazi held hostage in Somalia by al-Shabaab for 8 months, 11 days
• Filipino Glenn Costes held hostage in Somalia by al-Shabaab for 8 months, 11 days
• Norwegian Stephen Denis held hostage in Somalia by al-Shabaab for 8 months, 11 days
• Saudi diplomat Abdullah Mohammed Khalifa al-Khalidi held hostage by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen for 11 months, 11 days
• German/American Michael Scott Moore held hostage in Somalia for 1 year, 1 month, 18 days
• Australian Warren Richard Rodwell held hostage by Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) in Philippines for 1 year, 3 months, 6 days
• Swedish national held hostage in Mali 1 year, 3 months, 14 days
• Dutch national held hostage in Mali 1 year, 3 months, 14 days
• British national held hostage in Mali 1 year, 3 months, 14 days
• French national Serge Lazarevic held hostage by al-Qaeda Maghreb (AQLIM) in Mali for 1 year, 3 months, 15 days
• French national Philippe Verdon held hostage by al-Qaeda Maghreb (AQLIM) in Mali for 1 year, 3 months, 15 days
• Spaniard Blanca Thiebaut held hostage by al-Shabaab in Somalia for 1 year, 4 months, 26 days
• Spaniard Montserrat Serra held hostage by al-Shabaab in Somalia for 1 year, 4 months, 26 days
• American aid worker Warren Weinstein held hostage by al-Qaeda in Pakistan for 1 year, 6 months, 26 days• Canadian tourist Colin Rutherford held hostage by Taliban in Afghanistan for 2 years, 4 months, 7 days
• French national Marc Feret held hostage by al-Qaeda Maghreb (AQLIM) in Niger for 2 years, 5 months, 23 days
• French national Thierry Dole held hostage by al-Qaeda Maghreb (AQLIM) in Niger for 2 years, 5 months, 23 days
• French national Daniel Larribe held hostage by al-Qaeda Maghreb (AQLIM) in Niger for 2 years, 5 months, 23 days
• French national Pierre Legrand held hostage by al-Qaeda Maghreb (AQLIM) in Niger for 2 years, 5 months, 23 days• American soldier Bowe Bergdahl held hostage by Taliban in Afghanistan for 3 years, 8 months, 11 days
• Brit Murray Watson held hostage by al-Shabaab in Somalia for 4 years, 11 months, 10 days
• American Robert Levinson held hostage in Iran for 6 years, 2 days
• German Sinan Krause held hostage by Arrows of Righteous Brigade in Iraq for 6 Years, 1 month, 5 days
• South African Johann Enslin held hostage in Iraq for 6 years, 3 months, 1 days
• South African Hardus Greef held hostage in Iraq for 6 years, 3 months, 1 days
• South African Callie Scheepers held hostage in Iraq for 6 years, 3 months, 1 days
• South African Andre Durant held hostage in Iraq for 6 years, 3 months, 1 days
• American Jeffrey Ake held hostage in Iraq for 7 years, 11 months
• American Dean Sadek held hostage by 1920 Revolution Brigades in Iraq for 8 years, 4 months, 9 days
• American Aban Abdel Malek Mahmoud Elias held hostage in Iraq for 8 years, 10 months, 8 days

President Obama may say that Al Qaeda is defeated, or Al Qaeda is “on the run,” or that the “core” of Al Qaeda is in ruins and other political rhetoric, but the US State Department continues to issue advisories warning Americans traveling abroad that they need to realize that they are being targeted by Jihadists around the globe.

Of course, the State Department doesn’t actually use the term “Jihadists,” because we know that our Muslim Brotherhood “allies” might get upset if they did. And the exclusion of the term “Jihad” started under Condi Rice, not Hillary Clinton…just so you know…

It’s also instructive that to get the details of the State Department’s terrorism advisory, you need to go to the foreign media, because the US media doesn’t like to cover these topics any more. The report below comes to us from the Times of India.

The United States has issued a worldwide travel alert to its citizens including inSouth Asia where it said terrorist outfits like al-Qaida, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba ( LeT) might harm them.“US citizens are reminded to maintain a high level of vigilance and to take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness,” the State Department said in a statement yesterday. Noting that current information suggests that al-Qaida, its affiliated organisations, and other terrorist outfits continue to plan terrorist attacks against US interests in multiple regions, including Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the State Department said these attacks may employ a wide variety of tactics including suicide operations, assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings and bombings.

It said extremists may elect to use conventional or non-conventional weapons, and target both official and private interests.

Examples of such targets include high-profile sporting events, residential areas, business offices, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, schools, public areas, and other tourist destinations both in the United States and abroad where the country’s citizens gather in large numbers, including during holidays, the State Department said.

According to the State Department, anti-Western terrorist groups, some on the US government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, have been active in India, including Islamist extremist groups such as Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, Indian Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Taiba.

It is certainly worth noting that the State Department lists these Jihadist groups. This certainly runs counter to the narrative propagated by the Obama administration that the “enemy” is simply Al Qaeda.

It is also worth reminding readers that Lashkar-e Taiba was the group that pulled off the Mumbai massacre in 2008, which targeted Westerners and Jews in the Indian financial center. The reconnaissance and intelligence gathering for that operation was done by a US citizen from Chicago named David Headley.

UPDATE: We are not certain that the report linked below is accurate and valid, nor do we know, if accurate and valid, if it is related in any way to the State Department advisory. However, given the broad nature of the State Department advisory, covering the US and overseas and just about every type of target imaginable–AND the possible use of “non-conventional weapons,” the report below from the Crocodile’s Lament blog is worth at least a glance…